


(what I'd do) just to get back in her arms

by teaspoonofdoom



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Bittersweet, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s02e16 Colony, Episode: s02e17 End Game (X-Files), F/M, Family Issues, Gift Giving, Hugs, Lack of Communication, POV Fox Mulder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:15:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28215321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teaspoonofdoom/pseuds/teaspoonofdoom
Summary: Mulder and Scully's relationship confined in different places during the difficulties that the case put them through.---Before they go chasing after invisible zoo animals in Idaho, they have to talk about the elephant in the room.
Relationships: Fox Mulder & Dana Scully, Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	(what I'd do) just to get back in her arms

**Author's Note:**

> my entry for The X Files Net's secret santa
> 
> mostly canon-compliant for Colony and End Game (my fav myth arc of s2), highly possible to be continued in the future
> 
> title from _My way home is through you_

Before they go chasing after invisible zoo animals in Idaho, they have to talk about the elephant in the room. Which room thought? The office in the basement, perhaps, with Mulder's decimated cellular phone and his useless background check on agent Chapel. With Scully's concern, her 'paranoia' about the case, her-

"Is that what you want me to put on my report to Skinner?" It's a very-Scully line but he's the one to deliver it. "Because I would be more than happy to have you explain that to him."

"Damn it, Mulder,“ she throws down the folder, ”that is not my job." But it’s been her job for how long now.

In the same breath she becomes personal: "You'll pursue a case at the expense of everything, to the point of insanity, and expect me to follow you. There has to be somewhere to draw the line." 

The only thing Mulder's not ready to throw right back at her- _expect me to follow you_ , he doesn't, that's a choice she makes, over and over again - he'd bring up later. He'd prevent her from doing just that.

"Three identical men are dead. A fourth identical man is alive and on the lam. If the pursuit of this case seems like insanity to you, feel free to step away from it."

"An FBI agent died because of our pursuit of this case." She's much better at keeping this argument professional after wielding the word 'insanity' around first.

_He really should be used to it by now. On their very first case together she listened to his theory with a smile, an almost laugh._

_"You think I'm crazy."_

_A nod._

_And he backed off. She threw him half a bone then, acknowledging some missed time, and he was back at her face, giving everything._

"Those are the risks we take. You either accept them or you don't. We all draw our own lines." 

As he sinks into his chair, has a couple of seconds to note how awfully arrogant it is to imply the possibilities of innocent deaths are a risk for him to take, before Scully breaks the tense silence with her ruined shoe.

There's an easiness to them coming around after an argument. Easiness he personally hasn't felt since he was a child bickering with the neighbors' boy over basketball fouls, but suspects is a given in more functioning families than his own. 

(Mulder wonders if he and Scully are lucky to be compatible like that or if it's a thing she practices that rubs off on him. And if it's Mellisa Scully's sisterhood he has to thank for that phenomena.)

He is welcomed home with a handshake. His father beating about the bush from behind a smoke curtain. Echoes of his adolescence. Now his father's talking about a comforting certainty, moving on and buried memories, all the things Mulder could never connect to his sister's absence. 

If he ever held his breath at the door, if he walked on eggshells over the threshold, forgoing visual perception for a fragile faith, _the light has taken the most from him_ , if an enormous miracle could be willed into existence by his little broken heart with this ever-practiced ritual, what else could he do now but rush inside. With eyes wide open, he enters the living room. And there she is. Sitting on the couch, holding Mom's hand. All grown up, finally here. Seeing is believing, right. _Right?_ Samantha says his name, it's been reserved for her for the longest of times. 

(Some things _are_ too good to be true.)

"...By the time you reach me, I should have some very important information for you regarding this case," Scully on the machine says. It sounds as distant as his father's "I'll know more when you get here."

There's no room after the woman he believed to be his sister sinks. Just the expanse of the starless sky, the running river, the chill in the air in pale comparison to the one lurking beneath the surface. Half of him is ready to jump after them, the other half is drawn into Scully's arms. She's still trembling, having pulled herself from the car to give him a shoulder to cry on, all drying blood and blossoming bruises. He tries not to lean on her, but his sobs need a place to be concealed. She doesn't weep, holding him half-way upwards. Removing her fingers from his hair at the presence of Skinner, but not letting go until Mulder can pull himself back together. They brace each other with that stopgap comfort and nobody comments on it because, well, he lost his little sister _again_ and Scully's been kidnapped one too many times since she got to know him, because it's all his fault, and because he saved her still. 

Floating in his despair, he opts to plunge into possibilities, to count on chance, and believe in unlikely luck. Samantha found her way back from the bounds of the universe, she could still-

He forces Scully off to the hospital. If she'd question him now, he might not endure it. And she needs the medical care. He wants _her_ to be alright.

The scuba divers are ever searching, not unlike him on his quest. A second sleepless night in a row, far worse reasons for it. _What'd his parents have to say?_ He's been pacing around the place it happened for hours, reenacting each part, thinking of where it went wrong, of what he would change if he could go back. The scary part is - not that much. It feels like the right decision, yet he's not ready to point out why. Scully pulls up, with her blood still over her clothes.

And there's no room for emotions and _that_ conversation she's trying to initiate. She questions and he deflects, and it all comes back to that man, who tricked, beat, and threatened her-

"He's an alien."

"Is that what you're going to tell Skinner?" 

"I already told Skinner, that was the easy part. Now I got to tell my father."

Which goes right about how Mulder imagined it going. With the exception of a glimmer of hope, in the form of a letter, a keycard for an abortion clinic, amongst the guilt and shame. He shares it with Scully, she offers condolences, a body, absolution. And honest advice: to grieve without self-blaming.

It's easy to blame his weaknesses when the one wearing a face he's come to recognize as his sister's points out: "We knew you could be manipulated."

But it's easier to blame them _all_ for fucking playing with him like that, they don't deserve him, they deserve-

 _Him._ The rest is his signature fire. 

Mulder blacks out before it even starts, doesn't hate himself when the first thing he calls for after coming back to consciousness is _them_. The firemen have got to keep looking...

It's not the first time he's recovering from smoke inhalation with Scully by his side, a glass of water in her hand. He suspects it won't be the last. Her face is a unique blend of relief and dissatisfaction.

Mulder finds out then that the truth revealed itself to Scully less than 10 miles away from him. By the not-at-all-traumatizing image of a melting, fizzing face caving in, instead of having the purest form of trust she's capable of violated. Heart stepped on by four sets of identical feet, and counting.

When the hospital's staff, and most importantly Scully, deem his condition satisfactory, he heads to his mother's. Scully drops him off, goes as far as saying she'd wait out for him, but the U.S. Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases awaits her. As does a report for their case.

What he writes is an email. Making a love letter out of their unimportant argument. So much has happened already, where better to begin, or end, than there. Like hell, he'd let her join him in Alaska. Now that's a line he's not crossing.

She saves his life. She - Scully, not she - science. Scully's there when he flat-lines. And is the one to force him back. _And_ is a presence akin to a guardian angel's at his side as recovery progresses. Of course, they don't talk it out, not in this hospital room. Mulder's breath is too shallow, his voice too weak. And Scully must be too happy he's not gone to give him shit about, well- everything.

Some days later, he invites himself over to Scully's apartment. Between the cut-off goodbye on the phone and the drive with the windows down there, his mind was clear. Now, standing by her door with a bare box behind his back, Mulder feels the tell-tale tingle of a headache.

It somewhat eases off when she greats him into the warmth of her place with a single "Mulder."

**Author's Note:**

> this was a bit of an experimental writing style for me, so feedback would be cherished  
> far less dialogue than I'm used to, pls let me know if it worked for you
> 
> i have loosely written m&s in her apartment but with the time restriction, I couldn't get it to be readable (I'm an achingly slow writer), but i'd try to conclude the story in the future  
> (and even spin it off from Scully's view bc some of my fav things about the episodes cannot be done justice from Mulder's POV)
> 
> thanks for reading!!


End file.
